The Daily Word

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I would like to continue the series of thoughts regarding Advent, which literally means ‘Coming’, and just look at some more prophecies concerning the birth of Jesus. As I said last week, there are hundreds of prophecies about His coming in the Old Testament, but I just want to pick out a few.

Last week, we established from early in the Old Testament that Jesus would be born a member of the earthly Jewish tribe of Judah, who in turn was the great-grandson of Abraham, and up to the birth of Jesus, his most famous ancestor was King David. From here on, the prophecies we shall look at become ever more specific and follow the main points of John Clegg’s 10-minute ministry yesterday.

In the prophecy of Micah, one of the minor prophets, we find the prophecy of His coming answering the question ‘where’. “But you Bethlehem Ephratah … out of you shall come the One to be Ruler in Israel”. Bethlehem was, in one way, the ‘capital city’ of the tribe of Judah, but over time, members of this tribe had settled in many parts of Israel and did not consider that they needed to be constrained by geography, much like people today who move freely all over the UK despite being born in specific counties. But Joseph and Mary both lived in Nazareth, many miles from Bethlehem, and had no plans to move there. But God intervened using a census decree from the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, to take them on a visit to Bethlehem, where in due course Jesus would be born.

If we are wise, as Christians, we will seek God’s guidance on all but the most trivial of issues that crop up in our lives, and we must be very wary of making important decisions without that guidance. The Bible warns us directly and there are many examples of people in the Bible who said ‘I will … “ without consulting God’s guidance and disaster frequently followed such a decision. The words “Commit your way unto the Lord …. ” occur so many times in the Bible, that we ignore that exhortation to our peril. That commitment had been already made by Mary and Joseph as part of the birth prophecy of Jesus, an example again that we should follow.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church 

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